Afghanistan progress slow despite Canada's money and spilled blood

Another year passes. The long road isn’t finished; the interminable war carries on. In southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, in Panjwaii district, where Canadian sacrifices were greatest, the killings continue.

Canada’s combat role in Kandahar ended with a formal ceremony in July 2011, after five years of heavy toil. All of Kandahar’s districts — including Panjwaii, the Taliban’s birthplace and spiritual home — were turned over to U.S. troops and Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), which include the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police.

The Afghans are slowly taking control of their own security details, and are planning and leading counterinsurgency operations against such enemies of the state as the Taliban. The ANSF are now bigger, more equipped and better trained than they’ve been in decades. But analysts doubt they will be fully autonomous and capable of maintaining order inside Afghanistan by 2014, when American and other international troops are scheduled to leave the country.

The Taliban still move freely in Panjwaii, wandering the district in groups and intimidating civilians. “The Taliban have warned people to leave their guest rooms open, because they need a warm place to spend the night,” says Mahmood Noor, head of Panjwaii’s shura council, a group of elders who help settle disputes and direct policy in the district. “When the sun sets, people are not allowed to come out from their homes. There are fears of clashes and IEDs [improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs].”

In that respect, nothing has changed in the 16 months since Canadian troops left the province. The Taliban haven’t left, and they likely never will. Security has improved incrementally, according to local elders and government officials, but there’s no clear path to victory there, let alone the rest of Kandahar. Afghanistan as a whole remains a quagmire. Islamists still concede nothing to the national government and its powerful Western allies. Serious peace talks are just rumours, nothing more.

Money raised from the sale of illicit drugs continues to leave Kandahar and other provinces, usually ending up in offshore banks. Money and equipment used to sustain the insurgency still arrives from neighbouring countries such as Iran and Pakistan.

Earlier this year, insurgents targeted the Panjwaii district governor. A burly, straight-talking man named Haji Fazluddin Agha, he was appointed to the influential position in 2010, after senior Canadian soldiers and diplomats raised concerns about his predecessor, an illiterate and allegedly corrupt individual named Haji Baran. Thanks in part to Mr. Agha, some 30 Taliban fighters put down their arms to join the Afghan government side.

In January, Mr. Agha was travelling with two of his sons from Panjwaii district centre to Kandahar city. A suicide bomber riding a motorcycle rammed into their vehicle; everyone was killed. His replacement is said to be ineffective and is widely disliked.

Trust is hard won and easily lost in Kandahar. U.S. forces are less sensitive to this fact than Canadians, Mr. Noor told the National Post in an interview from Kandahar. Picking fights with peaceful civilians doesn’t help. In one notorious incident in March, a deranged American soldier walked into a district village compound and shot to death nine innocent children and seven adults. People in that village now support the Taliban.

Commitments haven’t been honoured, Mr. Noor complains. “The difference between American and Canadian soldiers is that the Canadians were keen to work more on reconstruction, making people busy and arranging more meetings with people and respecting their problems.”

Mr. Noor describes the 14-kilometre road that Canadians left behind. A legacy project, and more: It cuts across the middle of Panjwaii, straight through Taliban strongholds and their supply routes, connecting the remote western tip, called the Horn, to population clusters and markets in the centre.

The entire route was to have been paved. Hard asphalt would prevent insurgents from planting their IEDs beneath the road’s surface. “The Americans promised they would pave the remaining part,” says Mr. Noor. “The work stopped when the Canadians left. Since then, nobody has touched it.”

Villages in the Horn “are not secure at all,” says Mr. Noor. “The Taliban have safe havens there.” To the east, closer to bustling Kandahar city, Panjwaii and neighbouring Dand district feel more secure. But only in daylight. “We cannot travel at night beyond two kilometres of the district centre,” says Mr. Noor.

More than 700 Canadian soldiers and a small number of civilians remain engaged in a training mission in Afghanistan; most personnel are stationed in Kabul, the capital. Canada’s direct military involvement comes to “a firm and final end” on March 31, 2014, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced earlier this year.

However, Canada will deliver $110-million in financial assistance to help “sustain” the ANSF until 2017. “Canada will insist on strict accountability measures for this fund,” says our government.

Since 2001, when Canadian soldiers first touched ground in Afghanistan, Canada has spent more than $12-billion on military operations and reconstruction projects there.

Of course, the vast majority of spending was in Kandahar. Towards the end of Canada’s combat mission, with more American troops arriving and helping tie down hotspots throughout the province, soldiers were able to place more emphasis on reconstruction efforts.

Many of the schools that Canadian soldiers helped build and secure remain open. Teachers — whom civilian Canadians helped train — still risk life and limb, just getting to their classrooms every day.

Life has almost returned to normal in little Salavat, a village in eastern Panjwaii that the Taliban used to own.

“Security is improving here,” says the village’s appointed leader, Mussa Kalim. “People are busy in their fields, and others are coming back after having been away. Now we have 30 local police and 10 Afghan National Police. The Taliban are around but they dare not come into Salavat. The people and the police don’t allow them.”

A local school that reopened under Canadian auspices last year has struggled, but at least it hasn’t closed. “We have only three teachers,” says Mr. Kalim. “They still aren’t willing to come to Salavat. The salary is not enough, only 4,250 Afghanis [per month, about Cdn $82], which is very little.”

Further east, in Kandahar city, conditions are better. “It’s much improved, security-wise, compared to a few years ago,” says a local journalist. “We have no suicide attacks lately, and there have been fewer explosions and assassination attempts than we had two years ago.”

On the other hand, he says, “there are even fewer jobs for young people now, because foreign NGOs [non-government organizations] have stopped working here. There are no funds for their projects, and no new contracts for local workers. And people are thinking things will get worse in 2014,” when American and other international troops withdraw.

Samira Hellah is a 23-year-old law student who attends Mirwais Nika University in Kandahar city. If she can’t find a job soon, she says she may have to leave school. Her family can’t help her with tuition fees. “They have financial problems too,” she says.

Finding money isn’t her biggest concern. “Some relatives and neighbours don’t like that I’m attending school,” she says. “They especially don’t like that I’m studying law. They say this is not good for women in Kandahar. Women should only be doctors, that all.”

Ms. Hellah says she must take “extra precautions when going to the university. I change my timing and my routes every day.”

Without doubt, the impulse to ‘go big or go home’ was present on the side of the planners and military

Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wesa acknowledges that conditions for students are far from ideal; however, there’s been much improvement since 2008, when he returned to his native province from Canada, where he was an agronomist.

“We’ve made lots of progress opening schools in Kandahar,” he said in an interview. “So, far, we’ve opened 316 out of a possible 433. And almost 200,000 students are enrolled.”

The numbers he cites are impressive, but impossible to verify. Enrolment changes by the day, depending on threat levels. Gov. Wesa makes other claims that conflict with eyewitness accounts from districts and villages outside the provincial capital. “There is no area in Kandahar that is under the control of Taliban,” he told the National Post. “All the areas are controlled by our government.”

He did concede that IED strikes remain a serious issue. “These are powerful tools which the insurgents are trying to use against Afghan forces,” he said. “They are causing casualties both to security forces and to Afghan civilians. We have teams of IED experts to detect and neutralize [the bombs], but they lack the necessary equipment to do their work. That’s really a matter of worry and concern for us, and it’s causing us serious problems.”

In April, Gov. Wesa was the target of another assassination attempt, at least the second since he was appointed governor four years ago. He is aware of the rumours — that he will soon be leaving his post, that he has already offered his resignation to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and will return to Canada.

“You hear many things which are not true,” he says. “If the Afghan people need my experience and knowledge, I will stay. If not, I will look for another job. Time will answer this question.”

Time will answer everything, eventually. Now is time to remember those whom we sent to Afghanistan. The 158 men and women who never returned. Master Corporal Byron Garth Greff, from Swift Current, Sask., was last to fall. He was killed Oct. 30, 2011, in Kabul.

Remember those who did come home, many of them with physical injuries and emotional scars. Ask why we committed them to this fight. What was their purpose in Afghanistan, particularly in Kandahar, and what was achieved?

Too much wasn’t known, or disclosed, leading to Canada’s combat deployment. Analysts still question why the federal government under then-prime minister Paul Martin, its defence and foreign affairs departments, and senior military leadership pushed the mission forward in 2004 and 2005.

They had other options: Deploy troops to “easier” provinces, where there was less chance of conflict and serious casualty; limit the military’s involvement to training and reconstruction; don’t go to Afghanistan at all.

“Ostensibly, the [Canadian] military was seeking redemption after a decade of unremarkable performances in unremarkable (read: peacekeeping) theatres,” writes Matthew Willis, a research associate with the Royal United Services Institute, a London, U.K.-based think-tank that specializes in defence and security issues. “Or perhaps it really wanted to show the U.S., the Canadian public and other key allies that it really could do combat if called upon…Without doubt, the impulse to ‘go big or go home’ was present on the side of the planners and military.”

Hubris, ambition, self-interest. Wars have been fought for less. In Afghanistan, there were other considerations, too. It was a failed state, where terrorists trained and plotted and threatened a country, a region, the entire world. Canada spent enormous sums and spilled blood in the attempt to remove those threats and beat back and insurgency, to save lives.

Question the mission, the outcomes, but never the effort. The long road that Canadians started hasn’t ended; it’s up to Afghans to finish the job.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.